Thursday, July 12, 2007

You know who I’m surprised still has a job? Well, besides me. Paul Harvey, that’s who.

How can he still be gainfully employed on the radio? Have you ever listened to his broadcasts? I have the unfortunate pleasure of being bombarded by his “news” reports during my five-minute commute to work in the mornings. I’ll pull into the parking lot around 8:30 and sure as shit, this geriatric tripe-slinger is making yet another assault on the airwaves.

Who listens to this crap willingly? Does he have any fans out there? I’d give you an example of his feckless babble, but it’s hard to get the full effect without his patented pauses between random syllables. Screw it, I’ll try:

“Good Morning Americans. Chevrolet has started production on a new line of transportation. These ‘cars’ as they’re being called, require no cranking to get started and use keys to open doors and trunks. [Insert random nonsense]. Now page 2. Jeannie Pulaski of Cleveland writes in, ‘Citrocal has done more for my bone strength than my usual morning glass of crushed lime and powdered milk could ever do. Thank you Citrocal.’ I saw a movie the other night. It was nothing but a bag of popcorn popping for 3 minutes. Someone told me it was a microwave and not a movie screen. Then I fell asleep on the can. A bank robber was caught over the weekend after he wrote his hold-up note on the back side of his grocery list. Police apprehended him between the dairy and canned soup sections of the store. And, now you know . . . [abnormally long pause which makes me pray that this is the final grand mal that does him in] . . . the rest of the story.”

I swear, I feel like he’s having mini-strokes between the words in his segments. The guy gets less than10 minutes of air time every weekday, you’d think he’d be a little more polished with his broadcasts. But no, it’s like listening to a senile octogenarian paraphrasing random articles from USA Today and pausing every 3 seconds to open up another piece of hard candy.

And, how can it be news when a quarter of his segment is an advertisement for Citrocal, Oreck, Bose, or whatever he’s shilling? And, to top it all off, he gets paid more for his 5-minute segment than I get paid in a year.

Here’s the funny thing, though. On his website, it says “Paul Harvey, The Voice of the New Millennium.” Seriously? This is the voice that will define the years 2000–3000?